just thought to share my work-in-progress --although i must admit that this is pretty close to being finished--- to my yet-to-be-released track...yes, that's right, the magic visual community will be the first to hear it!

[media]

i've put a lot of work in this, implementing some of the "work-arounds" that i've posted elsewhere here like using a fade-in audio track to create a timecode for the videos to track to and some expressions to turn backgrounds on and off at specific times as well...

i also made some extensive use of the layer>input selector module of which the input number was being controlled by a midi file...in some cases, the input number was being set by a random trigger modifier while others were set using a trigger + wrap modifier....

in some scenes, i even used the inputselector as a mean to create fast editing jump-cuts synced to the kick drum of a midi track...this saved me a lot of time and playlist entries rather than trying to manual edit all those scene changes...if it wasn't for that, i would have had to create over 300 playlist items rather than the 75 i have now...phew!..

scene management was crucial as there was over 100 scenes i needed to keep track of...as such, i came up with a prefix naming convention to help organize what were assets "AS - ", 3D models "3D - ", FX processing scenes "FX - " etc all sorted and placed in various scene folders...

the typing text and raining text were done in aftereffects using text anarchy plugin...

all 3D assets were modeled in 3Ds max and exported to OBJ format...one model was exported as 31 separate pieces and then all combined in magic with, well, 31 geometry>model modules so that each piece can be processed independently...

i learned the hard way that if i wanted my orignal midi tracks to sync with the audio stem, the audio track needed to be a *.wav file...i was using an *.mp3 version and noticed that the sync was drifting...i kept messing around with offsetting the start time of the audio file but nothing was working to suit the 10 minute song...after a few hours chasing this issue, i thought to try and use the original *.wav stem and everything synced up!..so be warned that mp3 "timing" drifts...

your raining text example is awesome!..anyway, since i already have the plugin, and that it provided way more controls to set randomness in text sizes, speeds, transparencies etc in once interface, i may as well use it for the money i paid for it--lol...but i suppose that can also be achieved by using multiple star fields for each letter and altering the parameters to get that effect...

also with the typing text, again much more control/flexibility to use the plugin as i'm able to perfectly sync the timing of each letter at the frame level ...and again, since i have the plugin may as well use it ...

but yeah, all of your examples work great and the more inside the box you can do with magic the better...